Town Raven

Town Raven
In flight

ITS A DIARY !

This is a diary, or rather, field notes written up each day, with the latest entry at the top.

To get the full story, start at the bottom entry in the archive, and read upwards.
Then read the current diary entries from the bottom up as well.


Once you've got the full story, just visit and read the new story for the day!

Enjoy!

Location Map

Location Map
This shows where we walk and meet the ravens
The yellow and pink squiggly lines are two walks we take. The yellow one is the one we usually do. The squigglyness indicates how Madame visits her several important sniffing check-points!
We stop several times to feed the ravens, and you can see where they come from.

If you right-click on the image and open it in a new tab, you can then zoom in to see more details.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

March 8th:


Another icy morning! This time there also was some arctic wind - not nice. But the sunrise was lovely, with the pastel colours of dawn, then the sun slowly appearing over the rooftops.

I left the house at 6.55 a.m. (too tired to get out earlier). No raven calls as I got into Llandaff Fields, but the ravens started calling as soon as I was in the middle of the big field. Their calls came from the boundaries. The young pair appeared first, from the toddlers' playground, then the quarry pair. The bold pair came last, from the ravens field.

I waited with the feeding until a lone seagull had stopped circling over us and flown off. Then we had the usual routine, and as it was so cold, the ravens really tucked in. No scuffles - and no calls, but the companion of the bold raven did the begging display. 

Having all three pairs together at the same time allows their different feeding behaviour to be nicely differentiated: 
*) The quarry pair are still diffident and only pick up the scraps when I turn my back to them. This is odd, because they most certainly recognise me, and sometimes wait for me, sitting on the top of the goal posts of one of the rugby goals. They fly off after having taken a couple of scraps.

*) The young pair feeds while I look at them, but they do keep their distance, they stay a good twenty feet away, and come close only when I turn away. Should I turn back again, they flap and hop off for a couple of yards. These two also only take two or three scraps before they fly off.

*) The bold raven is still going after everything he can get, no matter if I throw the scrap towards his companion - he'll pinch it! She always waits until he's flown off to hide his loot - he manages to take about five or six scraps, while she goes away after having taken two. Both of them approach to within three or four feet of me, but will hop away if I make a sudden movement.

I gave them a lot to eat today, because of the cold weather, so I spend some time with them. Thus, at the end, a crow turned up - and the bold pair went for it, to chase it off. the crow flew up but came down a bit further away from the bold pair - unfortunately, this was close to the young pair, who now had a go at he crow. 
Both pairs didn't squawk or caw - they just flapped their wings, hopping very close to the crow. it looked impressive - but no damage was done. Finally, the crow flew off, without food and without calling for companions.

As the ravens  flew off to hide their food I started to turn back. Bas came, sniffing my fingers, but then he preferred to greet his 'friend', a lively Labrador called Cally. So Karen and I went home, eventually, after Bas had finished his rushing about.

Hopefully I will manage to get out earlier tomorrow!

No comments:

Blog Archive

Followers

Powered By Blogger